Update: December 23, 20101pm:– When the North failed to respond to the live fire drill on Yeonpyeong Island, the South decided to ramp up their drills substantially with fighter jets and tanks. In light of this, the North is renewing their threats to “unleash a holy war” on the South using nuclear weapons.

I may have been premature in declaring the North Korean threats nothing more than posturing, and in light of the thousands of views that this story has had today alone, I will continue to update it as events unfold.

Update: December 20, 2010, 11:30am – It would appear that the recent threats of retaliation were indeed nothing more than posturing by North Korea. The live fire drills which lasted just over an hour on Yeonpyeong Island were uneventful and while the South remains on high alert, the North continues to issue bizarre statements including this one issued today to the Korea News Service Agency KNCA;

“The second and third powerful retaliatory strike to be made by the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) knowing no limit as declared before the world will lead to blowing up the bases of the U.S. and South Korean puppet warmongers.”

While it’s encouraging that the threats made by the North appear to be nothing more than affectation, I for one will certainly have a curious eye on the Peninsula for the foreseeable future.

December 19, 2010

By Jeff Parkinson – Canadian Advocates for Charter Equality (CANACE)

As atrocious as the situation in our own back yard has been for the past nearly 5 years, I’m reminded on occasion how good we have it in Canada. While researching what was to be a tongue in cheek comparison of the personalities and human rights records of Julian Fantino and Kim Jong Il, I stumbled onto an alarming report that North Korea is threatening to attack the South with nuclear weapons in the near future.

North and South Korea have officially been at war since June 25, 1950 and although an armistice was signed in 1953, there has never been an official peace treaty. The current threat of nuclear war was buried in a story about South Korea planning to hold a military drill on an island bordering the North, but in the territory of the South.

In an Aljazeera story titled “S Korea military drills to go ahead” North Korean officials were quoted as saying that they ““will deal the second and third unpredictable self-defensive blow” to protect its territorial waters and that it will be “deadlier than what was made on November 23 in terms of the powerfulness and sphere of the strike”.

While it would be fun at this point to compare that to similarly incoherent statements made by Fantino, the next quote was quite concise and not funny at all. In a statement posted on Pyongyang’s official website Uriminzokkiri, they warned that “another war with South Korea would involve nuclear weapons.”

While reading an excellent story by Mark Vandermaas about why Conservatives can’t trust the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, I remembered a ‘feature’ video I had seen from CBC some time ago praising the wonderful residential school system and showing happy Native children learning about such things as Valentines Day, and “the mastery of words”.

Mr. Vandermaas’s story documents the failure of the CBC to present any unbiased reports on the victims of Caledonia and their willingness to instead provide air time to the criminals. At issue specifically is their unwillingness to run a story that they have been working on about the growing dissention in the ranks of the Conservatives as a result of Fantino joining the party.

Before we have a look at the 1955 residential school video, let’s look at a clip of one of the interviews that CBC conducted with Mr. McHale on the Fantino topic. While this was being filmed in front of Fantino headquarters in Vaughan, Julian was seen sneaking out the back door and driving away.

Presented by CanaceHD, It’s best viewed at 720p which may take some time to buffer depending on your connection. Some editing was necessary due to excessive wind noise.

While Julian Fantino managed a very narrow victory in the Vaughan by-election on Monday, it’s more than a bit note worthy that the supposed “star candidate” for the CPC won his home town riding by less than 1000 votes with the full weight of top party officials including the Prime Minister behind him.

Looking back at what was an interesting campaign, Fantino and the Conservative Party of Canada pulled out every trick they had to squeak out a win that was too close to call until after midnight.

When the rumours began flying that Fantino would be embraced by Stephen Harper, we did everything we could to be absolutely sure that the CPC were aware of Julian’s salty past before they made it official. The announcement was timed to precede the release of Christie Blatchford’s book which makes clear that Fantino not only failed as OPP commissioner, but went out of his way to abuse his power.

A fully informed Harper nonetheless fast tracked Fantino into the party in a very undemocratic fashion shoving him down the throats of loyal Conservative voters and members of the party alike. This created an instant backlash within the party as high profile long time members began contacting members of CANACE to voice their disgust and help us craft an anti Fantino campaign.